No child porn case seen over AKB48 pic

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department does not plan to pursue criminal charges against the publishing house Kodansha Ltd. over a controversial photo book on Tomomi Kasai, a member of all-girl idol group AKB48.

According to investigative sources Tuesday and Kodansha, the Tokyo police have been investigating whether one of the photos, a topless picture of Kasai, 21, with a foreign male child covering her breasts with his hands, violates the law against child pornography.

The law says photos intended to stimulate sexual desire such as by showing someone under age 18 touching somebody else’s sex organ constitutes child pornography.

Kodansha has already canceled the release of the photo book, scheduled for Feb. 4, and has collected the Jan. 12 issue of its Shukan Young weekly comic magazine that carried the controversial image and a promotion for the photo book, finding the publication “inappropriate.”

Breasts are neither organs nor used in reproduction, so either that’s a dodgy translation or someone in the Police needs to be told what ‘sex organ’ means. Or, most likely, both.

The hypocrisy over pornography in this country never fails to disappoint me; I have no problem with porn, and apparently nor do the millions of people who buy it, but I find double standards and highly selective enforcement of obscenity laws – that is, censorship by the back door – extremely offensive. Ban THAT sick filth.